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The rain stopped in its tracks and the summer came down in a billow and I got out my summer dresses. The dogs lay down in the grass high from rain, rolling and frolicking with their limber legs toward heaven as the blue sky pushed its way through the month-long gray clouds. Teenage girls walked bare-armed, not yet tattooed, and young women strolled bare-legged in vintage print dresses resembling those in the Liberation photos but with tattoos blending into the flowers of their dresses. In 1944, it was D-Day on the shores of Normandy, but Chartres was occupied until mid-August, with the first American soldiers arriving in Proust’s beloved Illiers-Combray at 1 p.m. on August 15 and in Chartres at 10:30 a.m. on August 16th, my birthday. The people here love Americans; even young people repeat the stories their grandparents recounted of the American tanks driving up our street of St. Pierre a few days later and the 85-year-old butcher hugs me every time he sees me, as if I had been there and helped. The first time I came here, it was as if I’d found my home so far away from home, where I could wear pink and blue floral dresses like my grandmothers’ and wear white socks and sandals and dance in the same streets Jean Moulin had walked and feel free.

2 months agoby jonell_gallowayEveryone loves salt and pepper except when it comes to their hair. Hair changes, bodies change. Our comfort zone is threatened. Our mothers didn’t teach us how to act and feel with grey hair and wrinkles. They never talked about how the transition felt. Do the rules change? Do people’s reaction to us change when white starts to show? Is that the end of our sexual attractiveness and the beginning of old age and decrepitude? In any case, I’ve decided to take the leap and blue is my theme color (to match my eyes). . . . . . #goinggray

2 months agoby jonell_gallowayThese lupini clams, brought straight from the boat in Viareggio half an hour away on the coast, were so fresh they were practically howling, and they were plumper and meatier than the often tasteless vongole veraci usually used to make spaghetti alle vongole. I much prefer them. Here I was opening them in a slow-cooked garlic, parsley and white wine broth. Once opened, I removed them and cooked the juices and broth down for 20 minutes with a bit of tomato, after which I added the almost-cooked linguine to toss it briefly with the cooking juices. This is one of

2 weeks agoby jonell_gallowayWhen I was a child, my best friend's mother painted as a hobby. I once made a silly remark that the apple in her Cézanne-like painting didn't look perfect, and she said something that changed my life. "Jonell, beauty is not about being perfect. It's about looking at the scars and imperfections and the things that don't quite fit. Beauty is in the differences." Thank you, Mrs. Miller. Ever since I can't look at an apple without thinking of Cézanne's apples. I see the beauty in the bruises, the irregular shape, the variations in color; I remember that he didn't

2 months agoby jonell_gallowayIt's time to make castagnaccio, a chestnut cake made with flour, olive oil, walnuts, and pine nuts, and manafregoli, a chestnut polenta made by cooking flour in milk, using chestnut flour from the Garfagnana in Tuscany. These dishes are best made, I'm told, with the freshly ground flour, which I can buy straight out of a jute sack at the market. It's so prized that it even has a DOP. In Lucca, chestnuts are often marked simply "neccio," the local dialect, and you also see Farina di Neccio della Garfagnana. I also used it in my Thanksgiving stuffing.⠀ .⠀ .⠀